In the early twentieth century Robert Goddard first started experimenting with liquid rocket fuel.

He had become interested in rockets when reading War of the Worlds by H.G.Wells.

Using air-tight chambers, he showed that, contrary to opinion, a rocket could fly in a vacuum like outer space. He continued to design rockets even although no-one took him seriously and at the time and his nickname was 'Mooney'.

When Goddard launched finally got his first rocket off the ground in 1926 people still laughed at him. It landed in a frozen cabbage patch. But he carried on and many of his patents and ideas were developed and used by the space missions. By 1935 he had made rockets fly faster than the speed of sound.

He also pioneered the use of staged rockets which fell away the further you got from earth. The Apollo missions were to use a design like this on the Saturn V.

A wonderful flash movie about Robert Goddard has been made by David Ma - he has kindly given permission for it to be viewed on this site. It's quite long - to view it click on the Moon in the picture above!